Vanished Hoffa still fascinates after almost 40 years

By Todd Leopold, CNN

Updated 1:58 PM ET, Sat September 29, 2012

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The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa – Nearly 40 years after his disappearance, former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, pictured circa 1955, remains among America's most famous missing persons. Authorities have been searching for the once powerful union boss since he vanished in 1975.

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The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa – Hoffa slumps in a chair at the Teamsters union office. He was one of the most powerful union leaders in America until being forced out of the organized labor movement. He went to prison in 1967 for jury tampering and fraud before being pardoned four years later.

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The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa – Hoffa appears at the Teamsters union convention in 1957, the year he first became union president.

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The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa – Hoffa, center, stands with other officials at the Teamsters convention, where he made a successful bid for control of the union in 1957.

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The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa – Hoffa testifies at a Senate Rackets Committee hearing in 1958.

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The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa – Hoffa on the phone at an airport in 1959.

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The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa – An office for Teamsters union local chapters that Hoffa set up.

The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa – Hoffa holds a Teamsters rally at Madison Square Garden in New York in 1960.

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The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa – Hoffa leads supporters at a Teamsters convention in 1959.

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The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa – The Teamsters boss appears on the cover of Life magazine on May 18, 1959. The headline reads, "A National Threat: Hoffa's Teamsters; Part 1: Sources of a Union's Uncurbed Power."

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The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa – Hoffa, pictured circa 1960, was a powerful labor leader at a time when unions wielded a great deal of sway over elections and were notoriously tied to organized crime.

The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa – Hoffa and his son, James Phillip, enter a federal courtroom in July 1964. His son is the current president of the Teamsters.

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The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa – Hoffa, second row, center, leaves court after being found guilty of jury tampering in 1964.

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The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa – Hoffa at the Pittsburgh airport in 1971 on his way back to federal prison after being let out to visit his ailing wife. He was released from prison later that year on the condition he not resume union activity before 1980.

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The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa – Hoffa poses for a picture on July 24, 1975, less than a week before his disappearance. He was 62 at the time.

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The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa – A Bloomfield Township, Michigan, police officer stands beside Hoffa's car after the former labor leader's disappearance in July 1975. Hoffa was last seen at a restaurant in suburban Detroit on July 30, 1975.

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The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa – Police sweep a field in Waterford Township, Michigan, in search of Hoffa's body in July 1975.

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The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa – Demolition workers tear down a horse barn for the FBI in 2006 in a search for Hoffa's remains in Milford, Michigan. The FBI had received a tip that Hoffa was buried on the farm.

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The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa – FBI agents search a field for Hoffa's remains on Monday, June 17, 2013, in Oakland Township, Michigan, outside Detroit. Alleged mobster Tony Zerilli tipped off the police, and a source close to the case said the information provided was "highly credible."

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Story highlights

Former Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa hasn't been seen since July 30, 1975

Theories swarm around the whereabouts of him, or his body

A new search has refueled our fascination and more theories

His middle name was Riddle, and that's what his whereabouts have been for the last 37 years.

Or, as one person said at the time of his disappearance, he wasn't dead at all. He'd taken off to South America in the company of a go-go dancer.

To date, none of these theories have panned out. But wherever the truth may lie, one thing is for certain: Jimmy Hoffa -- former Teamsters leader, convicted felon, Kennedy enemy and alleged mobster cohort -- hasn't been seen since July 30, 1975.

On Friday, police again looked for the union boss, who was declared dead in 1982, under the driveway of a house in Roseville, Michigan, just outside Detroit. A tipster told police that a body was buried at the spot around the same time the Teamsters head disappeared. Police found no "discernible remains" in the search, police Chief James Berlin said.

It's a disappearance that has held on to the public's imagination far longer than Hoffa was in power -- a testament both to Hoffa's high profile and the power of mystery, says pop culture expert Robert Thompson of Syracuse University.

Photos: American gangsters 10 photos

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American gangsters – James "Whitey" Bulger rose to the top of the notorious Winter Hill gang, prosecutors say, before he went into hiding for more than 16 years after a crooked FBI agent told him in December 1994 he was about to be indicted on federal racketeering charges. He was captured in Santa Monica, California, in 2011, living under a false name with his girlfriend in an apartment in the oceanside city. On August 12, the gangster was found guilty on 31 of 32 counts -- including involvement in 11 murders. Here are some other gangsters from America's past.

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American gangsters – Al Capone, or "Scarface" as he was popularly known, remains one of America's most notorious gangsters. Known for wearing custom suits, fedoras and spats, Capone was infamous in 1920s Chicago for his bootlegging and racketeering activities. Capone died in 1947.

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American gangsters – New York Mafia chief John Gotti was known as "Dapper Don" for his expensive suits and "Teflon Don" due to government charges failing to stick in three trials. He was later convicted of murder and racketeering. He died of cancer at age 61 in 2002 while serving a life sentence.

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American gangsters – Henry Hill, a mobster-turned-informant for the FBI died in 2012 at age 69. His story was the basis for Martin Scorsese's acclaimed 1990 film, "Goodfellas." Ray Liotta played Hill in the film.

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American gangsters – George "Bugs" Moran was Al Capone's main rival in the Chicago mafia, culminating in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929 in which several members of Moran's gang were killed. Moran died in 1957.

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American gangsters – Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker robbed banks across America before meeting their end when police and federal agents ambushed them on a dirt road in Louisiana in 1934.

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American gangsters – John Dillinger, gangster and bank robber, was the first criminal to be called Public Enemy No. 1 by the FBI. Bureau agents gunned him down outside a movie theater in 1934.

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American gangsters – George "Baby Face" Nelson, a car thief by age 14, associated with the likes of Al Capone and John Dillinger. Nelson died following a shootout with the FBI in 1934.

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American gangsters – Mobster Louis Lepke Buchalter was one of the forces behind a hit squad known as Murder Inc. He died in the electric chair at New York's Sing Sing prison in 1944.

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American gangsters – Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll was infamous for the attempted kidnapping of a rival gang member in 1931. Coll shot into a crowd, killing a child and injuring several other youths. Coll escaped conviction due to a lack of credible witnesses. He was later shot to death in 1932 while talking in a phone booth, most likely by a rival gangster.

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EXPAND GALLERY

"In this world of enlightenment and science and blogs and the Internet, there are still a few mysteries," he says, ticking off the Loch Ness monster and the questions surrounding the Kennedy assassination as other examples.

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Police: Hoffa a wound that won't go away

Indeed, Hoffa's disappearance seems ready-made for such speculation. He was an incredibly influential figure, perhaps the most famous union leader of his time -- a time when labor presidents such as the United Auto Workers' Walter Reuther and the AFL-CIO's George Meany regularly commanded headlines. He maintained a base in Detroit, blue-collar home of the brawny auto industry.

Part of the Hoffa fascination certainly comes from the attention his disappearance earned at the time, says Thompson. But it's the organized crime touch that gives the story a jolt of electricity.

"You get the voltage that comes from the media coverage that turned this into a myth," he says, "(as well as) what it was he did, which is not only the stuff of news, but the stuff of 'The Sopranos' and 'The Godfather.'"

There are also the circumstances leading up to his death. Two weeks before Hoffa's disappearance in 1975, federal investigators discovered that hundreds of millions of dollars had been stolen from the Teamsters' largest pension fund, Time magazine points out in its list of the top 10 most famous disappearances.

Hoffa was last seen at Machus Red Fox restaurant in suburban Detroit, ostensibly to meet with reputed Detroit Mafia street enforcer Anthony Giacalone and Anthony Provenzano, chief of a Teamsters local in New Jersey, who was later convicted in a murder case. Hoffa believed Giacalone had set up the meeting to help settle a feud between Hoffa and Provenzano, but Hoffa was the only one who showed up for the meeting, according to the FBI.

Giacalone and Provenzano later told the FBI that no meeting had been scheduled. Both men have since died. The current tipster used to do business with a man who had ties to Giacalone.

It's no wonder that Hoffa has inspired several Hollywood films, including "Blood Feud" (a 1983 TV movie about Hoffa, the Kennedys and gangsters that starred tough guy Robert Blake), "Hoffa" (a 1992 feature starring Jack Nicholson and written by David Mamet) and "F.I.S.T." (a 1978 film about a fictionalized Hoffa, starring Sylvester Stallone).

The appeal of the unsolved mystery runs deep, of course. They're the bread and butter of police procedurals: There's a reason that such shows as "CSI" and "Bones" have had such long lives (never mind the enduring attraction of Sherlock Holmes, who's also the subject of a new TV series). Such mysteries also touch on our interest in the supernatural, whether it's over religious icons, ghosts or visitors from outer space.

And, like an audience pondering a well-executed magic trick, there's something to be said for our inability to simply figure something out, despite having all the clues at our fingertips.

"For years now, we have had the sense that stuff is provable and solvable. Whenever anything defies that, it naturally becomes the stuff of extreme curiosity," says Thompson.

Of course, these stories tend to have an expiration date, and more than a generation after his disappearance, Hoffa's may be nearing his. Before Hoffa, one of the most famous missing-persons cases was that of New York Supreme Court Justice Joseph Crater, who disappeared in 1930 -- like Hoffa, he was last seen in a restaurant -- and inspired years of speculation and pop culture references ("Judge Crater, call your office" was a popular one-liner). Though the Crater mystery has yet to be solved, few people are even aware of the judge anymore. Why should they be? It was a lifetime ago.

Besides, if the Hoffa mystery is solved, that fascination will likely be replaced by letdown. Sometimes it's better -- at least for the sake of pop culture riffs -- to let missing union leaders lie.

"This idea that nobody knows what happened to Jimmy Hoffa represents something I think we need and hold on to," says Thompson. "The inability of the human mind to solve the Jimmy Hoffa disappearance story was actually important to our collective soul in a weird sort of way."